Latches for vehicle hoods and the like are typically actuated in two stages. During a first stage a handle is actuated inside the vehicle which moves the latch from a primary closed position to secondary closed position. To release the latch completely the vehicle occupant typically must exit the vehicle and actuate a lever that is under the hood. As such, current state of the art can have a safety catch lever integrated into the hood latch which requires a vehicle occupant to complete two different operations to release the hood, namely a latch pull from inside of the vehicle and movement of the safety catch lever from outside of the vehicle (e.g. put the hand inside the hood area and release the hood) in order to completely release the striker from the latch. This two stage manual release configuration may be inconvenient in some situations.
In terms of lifting a hood in general, and specifically for an active pedestrian protection system, the latch is needed to provide a travel that is greater than that which is used for normal opening. Due to mechanical limitations of springs and targets for mass and packaging, the normal opening lift of the hood cannot be as high as compared to what is provided using the active pedestrian protection system.
The automotive industry is attempting to better protect pedestrians from head on collisions with vehicles. When a car hits a pedestrian in a front collision, the pedestrian can be thrown up and land on the front hood of the vehicle and/or the windshield. In an effort to lessen the harshness of the impact, and in particular to prevent the person's head from hitting the engine block or other hard point located directly underneath the hood, it is desired to actively space the hood from the engine block whenever a front end collision is detected.
Desired is a mechanism to provide the following: a multiple stage release from inside of the vehicle; a visual signal that the hood has been released in order to notify a user the hood is open a mechanism to accommodate for positioning tolerances for one or more components of a latching system, and a mechanism to absorb striker over travel in closing direction while providing for normal closing operation, such as during impact situations.